You Will Not Feel the Drowning
by tore-my-yellow-dress
Summary: He was right, wasn't he? She's awful. Post We The Juries.


**A/N- _Warning_: this fic includes allusions to D/S and D/S interaction. If you aren't interested in serious adult themes, I suggest you turn back now. It's not 50 Shades, because quite frankly, I have some class as an author, but it still has the undertones. Tried to make it as in character as possible. This is for Steffi. I seriously contemplated only posting it on AO3, but alas, I have no freaks to give, and I think you ff people can handle it. Reviews would be very, very appreciated in the sense that I've never written something this mature before, and I'd like to know how I did. Hope you enjoy! **

**Set after We The Juries. **

* * *

Will is dressed impeccably. Mustering up every ounce of collection she has, Alicia rolls back her shoulders and squeezes her thighs together. She sits on the edge of the bed, bare feet resting on the carpet. She can see herself in a mirror, not so far away. Impeccable posture, raven curls shining from softening product in the dim lighting. The creamy nakedness of her skin drawing and daunting.

She is exposed.

And see, she knows how this works. It's funny, how she was married to the same man for seventeen years, and in the span of that time he never even thought to ask if she wanted something more, something more colorful. Threesomes and toe sucking from a blonde stranger, and he never thought to look in his own, warm bed. Some bright politician he is. Some man.

But then again, it wouldn't have worked, would it?

Alicia licks her lips and flickers her gaze from her own form to the man in front of her, tall and strapping, with his fingers curled around the broken bird of her heart, mending with every kiss, every touch. Peter likes friction, likes a spiked heel pressed against his throat, likes being pushed down, between legs. And Alicia loves that, too. Loves taking control over a courtroom, loves telling someone to go fucks themselves. Kindly.

But sometimes, sometimes she wants this. Mostly, she wants this.

He looks at her like she's something to eat. And she? She wants to be devoured.

"So…" he begins, shrugging off his blazer and hanging it on a nearby chair. "We're doing this?"

He doesn't look nervous. See, they'd talked this kind of thing at Georgetown once, over five shots of tequila and a half-finished Civ outline. They'd talked about Samantha Partridge, and her pretty red hair, and how after four days of exchanged glances in Crim, Will had taken her to a bar and tied her up. Alicia had spoken of Michael, her first boyfriend, how he'd had a sticky habit of wrapping a hand around her throat, never enough to scare her. Never enough to feel good.

So, this isn't new. It's just _new._

"Yes," she answers. She makes sure to lower the octave of her voice. Quiet. Meek.

A clear of a throat; the loosening of a tie.

"Have you done this recently?" he asks her. Alicia tries to stifle the urge to quirk on eyebrow at him, and looks down at her hands that she's particularly placed on her thighs. The pit of her stomach tightens. Will makes a noise of acknowledgement. "It's been awhile for me," he continues, flexing his fingers and unbuckling his belt.

"You're going to need a safe word," he tells her.

Alicia inhales sharply, inclining her head more. Contemplating it.

"Affair."

He freezes all movements, staring at her. The air hits Alicia's bare breasts, makes her pink nipples form tight buds. She shivers, tries to maintain her headspace, but fails. He's just got such an aghast look on his face. "Is that not a good one?" she inquires teasingly.

Will finally moves again, continues after a short lived moment, smirking. It's lacking the warmth. Brittle, somehow. "It's a great safe word," he assures her smoothly. Another beat. "Ready?"

Alicia swallows hard, bothered, somehow, by her own self. "Ready."

/

The next morning she wakes tucked up against his chest. She's sore, but it's a good kind of sore, like how she knows she's only this fatigued because the pleasure was so ripe, so real. She turns her wrists over, and the sun isn't even up yet, Will's still breathing even, but in the barely there glow- she can see the light bruises.

Five minutes later, when Will leans in to press a kiss to her neck, he leans over her shoulder and eyes them, still held up. His voice droops with sleep. "Sorry," he apologizes.

But it doesn't sound like he's actually sorry.

"That's okay," she says anyway, and when Will suddenly takes one of her own wrists in his capable hand, guides it up to his lips to press another kiss there, right on the marking he'd made with the strum of his tie, she closes her eyes.

"Will," she whispers, pained.

"We don't have to do this all the time," he reminds her. She knows that.

"Make love to me," she asks of him, turning so that she's more beneath him. Will licks a line along her collarbone, hums into her skin.

"With pleasure."

/

It happens twice, only twice, within the course of their thing. It's unspoken, their little pact. And even if it's always there, tinting every touch, there's never anything vanilla about the vanilla at all, never anything that would belie they are anything different than every other affair between a married woman and her boss. She likes the way Will is with her _all the time_ in bed. The other is just the proverbial, juicy cherry on top. Saved for rare occasions, when the tension is drawn too tight, when the stress is baring down a thousand pounds and relief is in sight.

But then there's Grace and priorities, and it was never really meant to last, was it.

It's a little sad, how things mend and go back to normal, or some kind of normal, and before she knows it she's becoming the good wife again. More ambition, more tact, more teeth in her mouth. Sharp canines that bite at Eli's bothering, at Jackie's bullshit. She adapts to survive, tired of the struggle behind camera lights. Never again to be held down by black and white ink.

Once, only once, she asks Peter to pin her down harder in bed. They're in the middle of the campaign and she's just kissed Will hard and angry over something stupid like energy drinks, and every time she lays down to sleep she thinks about how Will, in that harbinger moment, had looked like he was going to slap her- how a part of her had almost wanted it. She's counting backwards from ten, and at one nothing is happening.

She asks Peter, and he tries to help her. He tries to help her, and it's not enough.

Alicia accepts it.

Never asks again.

/

Washington Times had written an article about her, right after the scandal first broke. It was a tasteless piece, made her marriage more of a political issue, an entire disregard for her own private dealings. They didn't even call her a person, when it came down to it. They called her a butterfly. A delicate little butterfly, resting on her dear husband's arm. Amber Madison was compared to a moth of some sort. Peter was the hand, crushing her wings. A pretty woman, they called her. Too fragile for modern times.

Contrary to popular belief, Alicia Florrick is not a butterfly.

If she were though, her wings are made of steel and rusted lies, painted over with a sheer coat of red because it can't be any other way. When she transforms, it is in little steps, baby feet. She grows tall with her pride and pushes everything else into a box in the back of her mind's closet. She grabs Cary's hand and runs into some abyss of second chances, and she's always hated the parts of herself she keeps secret. It's a quiet kind of hate, like how she doesn't hate her brother for coming along, but always wonders if it had been just her, if their parents would have stayed together. She hates that she even thinks thoughts like these.

But then she goes, jumps off the ledge of a building and lands on her own two feet. And even if they're reusing paper clips, it feels like freedom, like stretching span and claiming something for herself, marking the treasure clients with a bright red x, the color of her lipstick. When she sees Will, that first time after the desk and the elevator-

She sees him across the table and her ears get hot.

Like fuel to the fire, wine to her lips. She drinks the liquid and calls it poison apple.

And a small, desolate part of herself, the part tucked into the recesses of her mind, whines like a dying animal.

She misses him, she does.

It feels like losing a loved one, how little things can come and steal her breath away, how she can prick her finger and remember the smell of his spicy aftershave, can remember how he'd laugh at all her stupid jokes, how he'd hold her chest to chest she ever asked, even if she rarely did. She remembers her best friend, and she misses him like he's dead.

Well aware she's the one who did the killing.

That's what makes her push through, what makes her dig her heels in and relish the fresh air, even if it's filling with toxic gas, whole lies she could choke on. She looks at Grace and she looks at Zack and she looks at Cary and she sometimes sits in her new office chair, spins around in it- she looks at it all and she clings to it.

If Will won't look at her right in court, if Will keeps dragging himself into her cases, into her life- a part of her is glad for that, too, clings to that like an old, ratty sweater. She tells him to get over her, and she's also telling him to never stop looking at her. Appearances are funny things. The secret, dirty truth she _hates, _is that she's glad to just see him, share his same air, though she'd never in a million years admit it to herself. His anger makes her remember why she's done it all.

And then there's ballot boxes and Peter's lies, always Peter's lies, and she doesn't drown in them anymore.

Alicia knows how to keep afloat, in any case.

The past five years have taught her as much.

/

There's the slam of a bar door, cutting off all the glasses clinking and the blaring music and the bass. There's the bone chilling winter air against her open sleeves, no coat. Forgot the coat in the bar. They take his car, and they don't touch. They don't even talk.

But no.

Before this, there was a couple shots.

But _no. _

Before this, there was exhaustion and need for release, and Grace and Zack weren't home for the night, and Peter's usual kisses were at the Governor's mansion, miles and miles away, and she was alone. And she was needing.

Then there was looking down the way, sitting on a barstool, there was looking over and seeing him, him, nursing his own glass of something dark. And then he'd looked over at her, too. She'd looked at him. She'd been looking at him and he had seen right through her. And maybe he knows about Peter's deal, maybe he knows and maybe he's the one who caused it, but they looked at each other and somehow that cause her to elegantly slink over to buy him a drink.

About twenty minutes later, twisted, double edged words, it just.

It just _snaps. _

_/_

_/_

_/_

See, she knows how they end up here.

There's a buzzing drone in her inner ear, and she can't make any sense of it all, this fragmented pith, can't tell if it's from her own pulse thrumming at a tick tock pace or from the way he drove her up against the wall, slammed her against the plaster and made her neck snap back. The base of her skull resounds with a sharp thud. She probably has a concussion, with the way her head rings. His water hands are wrapped around her thin wrists, and this, this is the reason she shies away from leaving her house without her tightly constructed façade.

But she was playing with fire, has been from the moment she defied his suggestion for leaving without pushing it, months and months ago. She's been lighting matches with changing her clothes and the Paisley group, and she's still waiting for the dry hay to catch, for everything to go up in flames around them both.

She can smell smoke, as he takes her bottom lip between his teeth. Tugs.

And a part of her has always known this was eventually going to happen, but she was foolish to count backwards from ten. Should've started at a hundred. Makes no difference, when the moment finally comes, and he's had it, and she's had it, and he's got his slack clad leg pushed between her thighs. Holding her against that first wall in his apartment.

She imagines, maybe, when she jumped off the building of stability she didn't land on her own two feet, maybe instead she landed in a pool of insecurity. She hasn't felt home in a very long time. And maybe that pool blended into a river of uncertainty, and even if she's stayed afloat now she's there, at the mouth of a waterfall, his hands the blades to her little canoe. Rapids and little deaths, and none of it ever made any sense to her at all. All she knows is they are there, at the edge again.

She doesn't know how this is going to play out.

Will crawls his hands up her skirt and she wonders if in a moment he will push her away, tell her to leave his abode and never return. She can imagine him telling her he hates her, he hates her, he hates her, all soft and killing in her ear. She imagines it and wonders why he hasn't said it yet. Will shoves his tongue in her mouth and she wonders if in a moment he will realize what all the discord has been about. Alicia is frozen, like she was when Will told her _you're leaving. _Like she was when she was at the cleaners, and CNBC was up on an old television. The countdown has hit zero and it's finally happened, and she's waiting for it all to play out.

The forest is burning, and she's waiting for her hair to fill with ashes.

And suddenly, that part of her that's vulnerably and feminine- that part of her she shoved in a box- peers out through the lid. Knocks on her throat. Asks for permission.

And suddenly, with Will all over her, her held firmly beneath him, it hits her.

She takes him in. The way despite all the months of mud-slinging and betrayals, he's touching her like a goddess to be worshipped. There's desperation to it, sure, but he still holds her like she needs to be held. He still touches her like he knows her, and even she doubts it, anymore. She looks at him and his forgiving, hurt eyes, and she wonders how she could ever run away from it. (But she knows how she could, knows why she did.)

It fills her lungs, the fact that in order to have him, she would burn the rest of her life.

And she's hurt him. She's hurt this wonderful, egotistical, stubborn jackass of a man. She's wounded him, and it doesn't feel like she dodged a bullet at all. It feels like she's driven a car into a tree, going seventy miles, trying to get out of town, drunk off her own need to get away. She's hurt him and she's not quite sure there's anything she could ever do to make up for it.

(And it was necessary, but still, but still, but still.)

It hits her, hurts her, and she lets out one painfully pitched sob, right up against his lips. Tears filling her eyes, making them shine. Her mascara will be ruined, but she's not thinking about that. She twists her hands in the lapels of his suit jacket when he tries to pull away, and it kills her, the worry in his expression. He cares about her, still.

He cares about her and it makes something inside her shatter.

He was right, wasn't he? She's _awful. _

"Alicia," he starts, one hand going up to stroke her cheek, wariness in his timbre.

He doesn't know why she's crying.

"Will," she whispers, broken and childlike. Small. "Will, I'm so-," she breaks off, tries to make her voice clearer, even as she hiccups. "I'm sorry."

Will holds her there, gaze searching her face. He runs the back of his hand up and down her jawline, caressing. Something unfathomable, unreadable resting in his chest. See, he hadn't planned it to be like this. In his wildest, unattainable dreams, he imagined them fucking like animals and leaving her alone in bed the next morning, cold sheets, like she left him. Revenge best served, and all that jazz. But this is different, and he doesn't know if he should just stop now, or if he should kiss her again.

But he wants her in his mouth. He wants to seal her up in his veins, needs it like a fix.

He is aching, too.

"Hey," he soothes her, brushing away a tear from her cheek. She is so far from Alicia Florrick, with her hard edges and her wrath, and in this moment she doesn't look like Alicia Cavanaugh either, with her easy going laughter and her teasing quips. Right now she is something beaten down. She looks like she's in pained, and it's funny, how he still can't stand the sight.

"I'm so sorry," she repeats like a mantra, pushing her nose up against his. Her back is starting to ache from the position, ankles shaking as she holds onto him. "If I could take it all back," she starts.

"I can't forgive you, Alicia," Will stops her, something wild in his eyes. A live wire. He's got her in his arms, just as tight. She jumps at the loudness. "I don't know how to forgive you, yet."

It makes her chest pang sharply, and she nods mutely.

Alicia swallows. "I just feel so guilty," she murmurs, numb.

Will watches her, with her resolved, unassertive pucker of mouth. With the way she makes little movements, like she's afraid the Lucifer will slither along and swallow her up. She's cold to the touch, and he knows how to warm her up. He knows tonight, of all nights, tonight kisses and caresses won't be enough. Will knows what she needs, has studied her like one would a favorite subject. So he knows what he's doing when he steps away from her, and Alicia stumbles, legs unable to hold themselves up. Will's arms jut out to stable her.

"It's okay," he tells Alicia. She looks at him blindingly quickly, fresh panic in her eyes- and Will realizes, bluntly, that Alicia thinks he's stepping away from her because he's ending it. Far from, in reality. "It's okay," he says again, nodding, schooling his features to show her calm, to show her comfort.

He grabs her forearm, such dainty limbs, and pulls her back from the wall as quickly as she can without falling more, pulls her and _leads her. _

The couch is in sight, and it makes his stomach roll at the way she just follows, doesn't put up a fight. He's got to snap her out of it, make her fight him. This, this might just be the way.

And he's still angry, he won't lie. But right now, it isn't about him.

He sinks down onto the cushions smoothly, and she goes beside him. Her breathing is even, tick tock, and he knows it's like that because she's focusing on it. They're close enough that Will can just reach a hand up and tuck a strand of her dark hair behind her ear. It smells the same, and he knows she still uses peach shampoo. He's missed it so.

"Alicia," he regards her, calmest he's been all night. The alcohol is nearly gone from his system, and he knows she's the same, sobered from the heaviness of the atmosphere.

"Yes?" she asks as she leans her head into his palm.

"Your safe word is still affair?"

_That _wakes her up.

Her eyes widen comically quickly, moss and confusion. "Will, we don't-"

"Yes or no category," he uses that voice, that one that has her clenching her inner thighs, that has a knot forming in the pit of her stomach. It sends chills down her spine, and suddenly she knows. She realizes what he's doing.

What he's saying.

"Yes," she agrees.

He takes both of her hands in his, clasping them together. "Do you trust me, Alicia?"

She doesn't answer him, at first. "Do you trust me, _here?" _he clarifies, looking her dead in the eye.

Alicia finds it within her to nod slowly, a blush painting her cheeks. She does, though. She's always trusted him with this.

"Bend over my lap."

/

Her hands are shaking.

If her head was spinning before, now it's reeling, and she studies the texture of Will's rug and falls victim to the way Will runs his hands across her lower back. The way Will's hands immediately go for her skirt. She braces her hands against the floor and lifts her hips so as to let him slide the material up. The air is frigid, makes goose bumps break out all over her body.

Will slides his deft fingertips along the skin just below the creases of her cheeks, and he knows, God he knows how soft that skin is. Alicia tries not to squirm when he inches underneath the edge of her high waisted thong. Will sits up a little straighter, rubs the flesh of her ass in small, tight circles, and realizes how much he's missed the way Alicia feels. The other women don't compare. Younger, in better shape- it doesn't matter. They just don't compare.

"We're going to fix the guilt." Will pushes her skirt up a little higher and his nostrils flare. "One for every client your firm has stolen from mine. Do you know how many that is?"

Alicia shakes her head as best she can, hands forming fists on the floor. She's in downward dog, but it's been years since she's done yoga. The syllables bubble in her mouth, something in her harsh against the word _stolen, _but no, it doesn't matter. Fuck, it doesn't matter right now.

"Thirteen," Will informs her.

There's hardness in the way he says it. This is the anger he's tried to keep at bay, and this is what Alicia's been craving.

Alicia doesn't say anything. Just waits.

"Keep count for me. Alright?"

"Alri-," she goes to say it, and then loses her ability to speak when in the very next moment, his hand comes down in a stinging slap.

She absorbs it, eyes wide, filling with tears, and her cheeks are red but it's not in shame, it's not in anything twisted. The pain goes to something else, and she loses her mind at how free she feels. Before was just a fallacy. This, this feels _real._

"One," Alicia grits out. Will doesn't continue right away. Almost as if he was waiting for her to safe word, to stop it all. But she doesn't want to. And that makes every bit of difference.

By three, her legs, not even supporting her, begin to shake like her hands do, trembling leaves in the wind. Coming apart. By five, it's not enough, it's not enough and when she arches her back as best she can, pushes her ass up against his hand, he gets the clue.

"Six," she says weakly, because of how the force of his hand makes the flesh shockingly numb to the touch.

She's thinking of being punished, she's thinking of awful and the look on his face in the office that fateful day. The way she'd wanted to take his face in her hands and kiss him, tell him none of it was his fault. That she was always the runner, and that's how it has to be And tears are falling down onto the carpet, and Will gives her seven, eight, nine, ten all together, doesn't even pause for her to say the words.

"You're doing perfect," Will speaks aloud, that same calm, brusque manner he did way back when, how he always handles himself when they're like this. There's something tragic in his voice too, though. She can hear it. Something like _love._ "That was ten," he reminds her.

The next smack has her biting her own fist to keep the moans at bay, because it hurts, it hurts but it also feels so awakening. "Eleven."

"Twelve," she can barely say.

And then.

And then it stops.

She's left in suspense, waiting, waiting, and finally she twists her neck as best she can without damaging any of her muscles, she twists and looks at him. There are purple and red bruises mottled along her skin. They make her bite her lip with the realization they will be there for days. That they'll be there at the staff meeting tomorrow. How she'll feel them when she sits down in court.

"Will," she whispers.

"You got my pant leg wet."

She looks down, pushing herself up as best she can, until-

"Don't move."

She does as she's told, dropping back down.

Will's hand makes her flinch, because of how she's strung so tight, and when he glides it along her cheeks, she wants to cringe away at the sensation of sensitive, ruined flesh, and she also parts her legs, because, well, it's a given. He dips his hands between, pushes aside her thong, and Alicia gasps at how wet she actually _is. _She can feel it, that pulsating heat.

Alicia moans for an altogether different reason when Will easily slips two dexterous fingers knuckle deep inside her.

Sweat runs down her temple, and she tries not to buck back. Tries being the operative word.

"I thought about this, you know," he talks to her as he begins to fuck her with his hand, even, deep strokes.

"When I looked down to see you had on that same outfit you'd worn. I thought about doing this. Such _nerve," _he teases, and she's panting, keening, needs the friction on her throbbing clit, something. She needs something. His voice is going and she wants to roll in it, all the kinks and growls even he can't help but let escape. "A part of me wanted to bend you over my knee and wear your pretty little ass _out." _

Will curls his fingers downward, presses against a spot she rarely ever-

She comes all over his hand.

Alicia cries out, mouth held open, clenching, bending. It feels white hot, everywhere, nothing to be seen except the carpet and his shiny shoes and- Will takes his other hand and lands one last, sharp smack against her right cheek, and that's really her undoing. "_Oh,"_ her heart skips a beat, and she's feeling too much, still in the throes of orgasm, and she can't remember it ever going on this long. "Oh, _shit."_

She can hear Will making some kind of noise, maybe laughter, but the world has reduced to the finite nerve endings, to his fingers still buried deep inside her, to her spent flesh. Will leans down and presses a kiss to her clothed back, closed mouthed. He inhales her scent and tries to find his right mind again right along with her.

It happens, eventually.

/

A little later, her clothes back in place, she's sitting right side up after the wave of vertigo that hit her immediately upon sitting up. Will had pulled her into his lap so that her ass didn't have as much pressure baring down on it, stroking her cheek, her hair. Alicia had tried to return the favor, but Will had just shook his head. The relief he needed wasn't to be thought about, right then.

He wanted it, of course.

But now is not the time.

It's a little funny, and a little sad, that he knows he's probably never going to have Alicia in his presence like this again, that this all started as alcohol and need for relief, and yet he still won't take exactly what he wants. It's about what she needs. It's always been about that, and maybe that's been the problem all along, the crux of the matter.

He holds her, like he always has.

And Alicia knows what he's doing.

The guilt has eased, he'd been right. He'd known what she needed. But now she just looks at him, leans in to press her mouth against his like they're still lovers, and all she can think is that she doesn't want this night to end. And it will. It always has to end, with them. "Will," she says his name softly. The tears have all dried up, but she's pressing her mouth to both his cheeks, to his nose, to his forehead. She looks at him and she knows what she's doing.

"Affair."

She leaves him on the couch, closes the door gracefully behind her when she leaves.

Alicia hails a cab, but only when she's finally home, home to an empty bed, does she finally bow her head.

She does not cry, so much as heave with loss.

/

A few days later they're in court again, and the judge hasn't arrived yet, so they have time to sit there and stew. That jawline is ticking, but Will doesn't emote anything. No anger, no sadness.

And this is infinitely worse.

Alicia tries to steel herself against what comes at the bottom of the waterfall, the jagged rocks, when there's soot in her soul and all she's left with is a burnt down being. It's already starting to not hurt as much when she sits down, and she wonders if soon it won't hurt so much when she sees him and his stupid, perfect jawline. But she lets her mind linger. Think.

Thinking is her enemy, these days.

Her eyebrows furrow.

"Thirteen," she mutters to herself, looking at him. She hadn't said it, had she? She hadn't counted that last number. Will looks over at her, that expressionless void.

"What?" he mouths.

Alicia shakes her head, swallows thickly.

"Nothing," she says, clearer. She sticks the words out there, stops staring. "Sorry," she apologizes, looking back down at her notes, loaded words clinging to the roof of her mouth. See, it's not a lie when she says these things and makes it easier.

See, they've always been like this.


End file.
